Lingala, meaning “language of the Bangala (riverine) people,” evolved from Bobangi, a Bantu language of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo family, which was used by riverine traders between the northwestern bend of the Congo River and Stanley (now Malebo) Pool in the south and along the Ubangi River. Lingala developed in the late 19th century from the Bobangi used by missionaries for proselytizing and by colonial administrators for communication with the local populations through their auxiliaries such as the armed forces and the police. Lingala continues to be associated with the military and the police throughout the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Lingala enjoys a great deal of local prestige among the masses. Because it functions as the primary vernacular of both Kinshasa and Brazzaville, it is associated with modernity and urban culture. While French is associated with power and socioeconomic mobility in both capital cities, Lingala determines participation in the popular culture. It is the dominant language of popular dance music, soukous (an urban style of indigenous dance that first developed in the region in the 1960s), and jazz throughout Central Africa, even in places where it is not spoken. Lingala radio and television broadcasts, print materials, and audio cassettes have been spreading rapidly in both the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo.

Unlike Kikongo-Kituba, another Bantu creole, Lingala has preserved more of the canonical Bantu agglutinating verbal structure, in which several prefixes and suffixes attach to the verb to modify its meaning. An example is a-ko-m ón-is-a yo ‘he/she will show it to you’ (literally, he-[future]-see-[cause]-[final vowel] ‘he/she will cause you to see’). It has also retained the simplified subject-verb agreement system now based on the distinction between animate and inanimate subjects, such as mw-ána a-kómi ‘the child has arrived’ versus e-lóko e-kómi ‘the thing has arrived.’ Lingala is also very tonal, which helps identify nonnative and nonfluent speakers even among Bantu speakers, who tend to pronounce words using the wrong tonal patterns. Canonical Bantu grammatical features are more common in Lingala Makanza, the standard variety of Lingala designed by missionaries and promoted by the school system. Lingala is one of the four major indigenous lingua francas, called “national languages,” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as a vernacular of urban centres in the western part of the country, except in Bas-Congo (Lower Congo) province and in southern and eastern Bandundu province.